


wind down hour

by trellomonkey



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Caretaking, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Showers, also very brief mention of pharmercy, god this is schmaltzy as FUQ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 00:23:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12829329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trellomonkey/pseuds/trellomonkey
Summary: The strike team has been gone for roughly nine weeks by the time the transport lands back at Gibraltar. They’ve been radio dark for nearly half that time.Or, Jesse can barely stay upright after a particularly grueling mission, so Hanzo takes care of things himself.





	wind down hour

**Author's Note:**

> I've deadass been trying to write something for Overwatch for over a year now, and it just... hasn't been easy in the absolute slightest??? I'm always unhappy with characterization or my ideas are too big for my attention span and lord almighty do I have a number of unfinished Overwatch drafts.
> 
> So I forced myself to sit down with something easy and finish it. This is that thing. So, uh. Here ya go.
> 
> ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

The strike team has been gone for roughly nine weeks by the time the transport lands back at Gibraltar. They’ve been radio dark for nearly half that time.

To be fair, Morrison had warned the watchpoint that this outcome was more than likely. The King’s Row underground is contentious enough on its own without rumored Talon activity or strangers snooping around, no matter how inconspicuous the strike team tries to be. Still, after a little over a month of complete silence on the wellbeing of their teammates, their loved ones, it’s beginning to stretch even the senior agents a little thin.

Light finally returns to the comms maybe an hour or two before the transport actually comes into view on the horizon, and even then, the transmission suffers from some bad interference. Six strike team members and three auxiliary agents are present and accounted for, but they report some bad injuries and general wear and tear on basically everyone. Lena tries to sound optimistic and reassuring, but even her typical brand of unyielding cheer is showing cracks.

Med team is the only personnel allowed on the landing pad when the transport finally touches down. It’s unwise to disregard strict orders from either Dr. Ziegler or Captain Amari, never mind both of them.

It’s another six long hours of whispering and fretting before any developments rear up, and rear up they do. At the not-so-gentle urging of Winston, who’s still getting used to technically outranking Overwatch’s illustrious former strike commander, Morrison decides to hold a _truncated_ debriefing rather than a full one. Winston, Angela, and Ana meet with him and the three strike team members not currently consigned to med bay cots.

If an agent isn’t under the watchful eye of the med team, then they’re sequestered away in meetings. No rest for the wicked, evidently.

In the watchpoint’s sparring range, Hanzo deftly blocks a kick aimed squarely at his neck.

“I just don’t understand the way he thinks,” Fareeha says, wheeling her leg back down to return to her stance. Hanzo takes a jab at her jaw but she dodges it easily. Neither of them are wholly committed to the routine, mostly glad to have someone to kill time with, “I’ve looked up to Jack my whole life, but isn’t he exhausted too? Why go to all the trouble?”

Hanzo ducks to avoid her next punch, taking advantage of their height difference. “You’ve known him longer than I have,” he says, taking a full step back to disengage. Fareeha jumps up and down a bit, shakes out her limbs. “I would imagine he is trying to put the mission behind him.”

Fareeha rolls her eyes. “I guess. Still, he’s got my mom _and_ my girlfriend locked up in there until who knows when. Surgery and saving lives I could understand, but procedure feels like a waste.”

“I doubt it will be much longer,” Hanzo tells her. If he’s learned anything in his time as an agent, it’s when Jack Morrison insists on something, one can almost always bet that Winston will be there to fight him on it.

He waves Fareeha goodbye as they part ways and he returns to his own quarters to rinse off. He tries to keep his mind from wandering, tries to keep his own irritation from building, but he relates to her struggle. He has loved ones involved in his this whole mess, too.

Med bay does let him in to visit Genji, though, so that helps mitigate that irritation.

His brother is mostly stripped down, only the cybernetic pieces of his armor remaining on his person. His visor and helmet are gone, which is normally how he walks around the watchpoint these days anyway. His arm, on the other hand, is reduced to an extremity port, the limb itself having been removed after being thoroughly crushed.

“It’s somehow only been this arm, three times in a row,” Genji sounds amazed as he stares at the stump of his prosthesis. Hanzo knows it’s a rather trivial injury, one that will take mere hours for engineering to amend, but the evidence of his brother’s peril still leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

“Your luck will run out if you’re not careful,” Hanzo tells him. The warning is good-natured, one that doesn’t hold the weight of his childhood reprimands. The concern of it makes Genji smile, and though Hanzo can’t see the motion behind his brother’s faceplate, it does reach his eyes.

“I’ll have to borrow some of yours.”

“You are welcome to try.”

He stays with Genji maybe an hour or so more until med bay lights up with activity as Dr. Ziegler and Captain Amari return. Hanzo wishes his brother a swift recovery and bows out to stay out of their way, nodding his acknowledgement to the members of the strike team he passes as he leaves. Reinhardt has one enormous arm strapped to his abdomen in a splint, but he’s regaling the junior medical agents around him with stories of their triumphs in London, his laughter booming around the room. Hana’s sleeping soundly in the cot next to him, and though all the agents have been undoubtedly stabilized, the bandages around her arms and neck are concerning, to say the least.

Dr. Ziegler and Captain Amari returning to their posts means the debriefing must have adjourned, and lo and behold, Hanzo finds someone trying and failing to break into his room.

Jesse McCree looks like a stiff breeze might not only knock him over but blow him right back to Santa Fe where he came from. He’s clumsily trying the different keycards he’s got on a ring, tongue poking out in concentration. Hanzo leans against the wall a few feet from him.

“Having trouble?”

Jesse looks up like he’s waking up from a dream, and when he spots Hanzo, he grins. “Hey, sweetpea,” he says. He mirrors Hanzo’s movement and leans against the door, but his is much less casual, much more bone-tired. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“I should probably be asking you that,” Hanzo replies as he approaches. He knocks one knuckle next to the door, underneath the electronic nameplate that clearly reads _H. SHIMADA_. Jesse really has to tear his attention away from the archer, but his eyes eventually fall where Hanzo’s pointing.

“ _Oh_ , damn,” he says finally. He looks back to Hanzo and smiles sheepishly. “Guess I came here on muscle memory. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“No need to apologize.” Jesse pushes himself off the door, yawning as he moves to return to his own quarters, but Hanzo catches his elbow. “Jesse, your room is on the other side of the watchpoint. You don’t have to leave.”

Jesse seems woozy, cloudy. “You sure I’m not imposin’?”

Hanzo rolls his eyes. “How many nights have you spent here? Have you ever heard me complain?”

The sharpshooter looks down at himself, and Hanzo won’t lie, he’s looked better. Nine weeks in the King’s Row underground without access to typical amenities has left Agent McCree… not _squeaky_ clean, as one might expect. He’s got a fresh pair of scrubs from the preliminary examination Dr. Ziegler and the med team gave him, but it’s not as if they had the time to rinse him off given that Mei had suffered a pretty bad concussion. Between the dirt and the dried blood and the caked on grease, he’s looking more grime than man at the moment.

He’s filthy, is all, and he seems to know that. Jesse shrugs, a little embarrassed. “Didn’t wanna mess up your room.”

Hanzo chuckles airily, passing his own keycard across the door’s sensor as he runs his grip down to take Jesse’s hand. “Follow me, cowboy.”

Hanzo has to struggle a little with pulling against Jesse’s natural gravitation toward the bed. “You’ll sleep better if you shower first.” Jesse whines, his shoulders slumping in protest, but Hanzo’s still able to coax him toward the bathroom. “Enough of that. You’ll thank me later.”

He gets the water running as Jesse strips out of his scrubs, a laborious effort that takes three times as long as it normally does. Hanzo watches him patiently, the way he blinks slowly and has to lean against the tile to stay upright, and eventually elects to shuck his own shirt and sweats as well.

Jesse looks up at him, grinning lopsidedly. “Care to join?”

“Amazing that you have the energy to joke but not to take off your own clothes.”

“Point taken.”

Hanzo and Jesse have been… well, _Hanzo and Jesse_ for about a year now, give or take a few weeks. Three weeks, to be precise, in three weeks it’ll be a year. Hanzo doesn’t count himself as sentimental, but one doesn’t visit their ancestral home on the same day for ten years in a row without having a bit of a thing for timetables.

Acclimating to Overwatch had been a slow process, and one that didn’t take with immediate ease, most of that fault falling with Hanzo. Initially, it involved a good handful of torturous shouting matches between him and Genji and some self-ostracizing that he most certainly wouldn’t have had to suffer had he stayed nomadic, but age and perspective have both left him mellowed. Turns out he only believed that loneliness was meant for him because he didn’t allow himself to feel anything else.

Genji had waltzed back into his life with a grace Hanzo can admit he envies now. Jesse, on the other hand, had tumbled into it.

He ushers Jesse into the shower when he deems the spray warm enough. The larger man lets out an even sigh through his nose as the water cascades down his back, eyes sliding shut as the tension in his shoulders releases. Hanzo steps in carefully, and though the shower is hardly large, it’s not necessarily uncomfortable for the both of them.

Hanzo rummages through his supplies. “See? You would have woken up sore.”

“After that flight I doubt I’ll be able to avoid that anyway.” Hanzo reaches his hand up, cards his fingers through Jesse’s hair as the water rinses through it. The sharpshooter leans against the contact, hands instinctively falling to Hanzo’s waist in front of him. “You keep that up and I’ll fall asleep right here.”

“Well.” Hanzo says, fiddling with a bottle of shampoo. “Try not to.”

With very little persuasion, Jesse leans his forehead against Hanzo’s shoulder as the shorter man runs the soap through his hair. Jesse’s arms move to encircle his waist, and he’s swaying lightly as Hanzo works at his locks. Hanzo knows that this exercise is mainly for Jesse’s benefit, but he can’t help but enjoy the feeling anyway, the warmth and mass of him.

“You had my shampoo in here?” Jesse asks once he registers the smell.

“I ran out of my own,” Hanzo lies. The smell is soothing, and the time apart had made him weary. “I’ll buy you more.” Jesse chuckles against his shoulder, though, doing his best to shake his head.

He massages gently at Jesse’s scalp, carefully working away at the months of soot in his overgrown hair. The taller man is practically melted against him now, arms enclosing Hanzo loosely as he submits to the contact.

Quietly, aware of how his voice reverberates off the walls, Hanzo asks, “What happened on the mission?” He gets no response at first, the motion of running his hands through Jesse’s hair more comforting to him than he’s willing to admit, and he presses an apologetic kiss against the man’s temple. “I don’t need to know.”

“Hmm?” Jesse mutters as if he’s just coming awake. “Sorry, dozin’ off a little here. You got nice hands.”

Hanzo huffs a laugh. He pushes at Jesse’s shoulder to urge him back up, working the shampoo out of his hair under the water. “I asked what happened in London. How did we lose contact with you?”

Jesse hums, swiping some wet hair out of his eyes. “Some kinda EMP blast from the clock tower. Knocked all our comm lines out. Lena managed to tinker ‘em together enough so that we could talk between the team, but nothing was comin’ in or goin’ out.”

Hanzo nods. He cups Jesse’s face in his hands, sweeping his thumbs against the dark bags under his eyes. He’s got blood caked in his eyebrows and his beard could certainly use a trim. “The Talon hacker?” Hanzo asks, reaching back to find another bottle of soap and a washcloth.

“Yeah, Sombra.” Hanzo brings the washcloth to Jesse’s face, rubbing in small, soothing circles to work off the layer of who knows what. Jesse’s eyes slide shut and he leans against the contact, fingers running up and down Hanzo’s sides. “She had us pinned down there for a good while. We flushed her out, though, at least for now.”

There must be at least three or four different kinds of oil stained against Jesse’s skin as Hanzo starts working down his neck, over his collarbones and across the expanse of his chest. Bit by bit, the stiffness in Jesse’s muscles is smoothed out under Hanzo’s hands. The sharpshooter tries to stifle a yawn.

Hanzo glances up at him. “Didn’t you sleep at all on the transport?”

Jesse shakes his head, blinking the fog out of his eyes. “Mei hit her head real bad. Wanted to make sure she didn’t fall asleep.” He can’t suppress the second yawn that racks through him, and Hanzo muses that he’s awfully endearing. “Lena and Jack were flyin' the damn thing, and Lucio was too busy holdin’ together everybody else. Never seen the kid wound up so bad.”

The archer pauses, gazing up at Jesse’s face with his brows knit together. “When was the last time you slept?”

Jesse has to think about it for a second. Hanzo watches as soapy water sluices down the powerful breadth of his chest, his abdomen, over the waterproof joints of his prosthesis. The film of dirt goes away with it, flowing innocently into the drain as if it was never there to begin with. “Early Sunday morning? Maybe 0230? Got about four hours.”

Hanzo can practically feel the weakness in his own bones. He places the washcloth aside and takes Jesse’s face back into his hands. “It’s Thursday, my love.”

“Thanks for the clarification.” Jesse's smile is somehow still sunny when Hanzo quirks an eyebrow at him. “That ain’t sarcasm. I really wasn’t sure but I was too embarrassed to ask.”

That earns him an eye roll, but there’s no real exasperation behind it, only unbridled fondness that surprises even Hanzo himself. He catches Jesse laughing as he reaches up to press their lips together, close-mouthed and warm and relieved to be reunited. “You and your spirit are undamaged,” Hanzo mutters against his lips as they pull apart, fingers threaded through Jesse’s hair. “Little else matters to me.”

It occurs to Hanzo, then, that that was the first time they’ve kissed in nine weeks. This has been the longest time they’ve gone without touching each other since they’ve been together.

It seems to dawn on Jesse as well, his pupils dark with equal parts affection and fatigue. Hanzo lets himself get crowded against the cool tile of the shower, more than willing to abide by Jesse’s sudden proximity, his heat. Jesse catches his mouth again and it’s deeper this time, slower. When he pulls away, he nips at Hanzo’s lips. “I missed you,” he says, nose bumping against the smaller man’s, “Missed bein’ able to talk to you. Love hearin’ your voice.”

There’s a small part of him that wants to tease Jesse, make some quip about his propensity for romance. “You can hear it all you like now,” he says instead, just to watch the way it makes the affection in Jesse’s eyes spark and shimmer. “I’m very glad to have you back.”

Jesse leans down to kiss him again, Hanzo meeting him halfway. He sighs contentedly, and when Jesse’s tongue swipes against the seam of his lips, he lets himself be devoured.

They stay entwined with one another for what feels like years, time being made up exponentially as minutes tick away. Hanzo has to pull himself away after a while, too caught up in the way Jesse’s sucking at his bottom lip to trust his own restraint. “Much as I’m eager to have you to myself again,” Hanzo breathes, noting the way it makes Jesse’s eyelashes flutter, “we shouldn’t. You need rest.”

Jesse presses their foreheads together, easily understanding. “I know, I know,” he chuckles. He pulls back to press a kiss to Hanzo’s temple, ducking close enough to rumble in his ear, “I couldn’t even if I wanted to, and I kinda always want to.”

Hanzo resists the shiver that tries to shoot down his spine. “You are insatiable,” he says, nose pressed against Jesse’s hairline. The distinct smell of sweat and underground has fled him completely, leaving behind only the faint scent of the soap.

“You love it,” Jesse replies, and Hanzo has to shoo him away to keep himself from admitting that it’s true.

He shuts the tap off and steps out to grab them both towels, leaving Jesse to dry off in the bathroom while he rummages around for some fresh clothes. Their things have blended into an odd amalgam of belongings split halfway between Hanzo’s room and Jesse’s, and luckily he’s able to dig out a faded university shirt and a pair of flannel pajama pants, both of which are much too big to be his. He tosses them in to Jesse, who’s rubbing at his eyes to try and stay awake the mere extra minutes it takes to amble from the shower to the bed.

When he finally crawls under Hanzo’s covers, the collar of the shirt damp from his hair, he groans as nine weeks of sleeping in a gutter instantly slip away from him. “Okay, you were right, bein’ clean is nice,” he says, his voice muffled by the pillow his face is smashed into.

Hanzo pulls his own clothes back on, his amusement mounting as Jesse practically burrows into the mattress. “You’ll need to eat as soon as you get up. I’ll have something ready for you.”

Somehow, Jesse has the strength to pop one eye open, squinting against even the dim lights of Hanzo’s quarters. “You ain’t stayin’?”

That stalls him. Hanzo taps the screen of his holopad on the bedside table to check the time. “It’s three in the afternoon, Jesse.” He says that as if he has anything even remotely resembling a packed schedule. All he was planning on before the debriefing adjourned was maybe catching up on some reading or meditating or… to be honest, he's not great at killing time.

Jesse shuffles, leaving just enough space for a second person on the mattress. “You don’t have to. I sure wouldn’t mind the company, though, least ‘til I conk out.”

“You mean in ten minutes.”

“Sugar, that’s generous.” Hanzo’s already pulling back the covers, though, slipping into the spot Jesse made for him. “I’m puttin’ my money on a solid fourteen hours, so you definitely don’t gotta stay the whole time.”

“I’ve never been known for taking midday naps,” Hanzo tells him. He reaches over to the light panel at the bedside table, and the room plunges into darkness. As if he was waiting for cover, he feels Jesse’s strong arm snake around his middle and pull him toward a familiar, broad chest. “I guess it’s never too late to start, though.”

“That’s the spirit, honeybee.” Jesse tells him, his words beginning to slur. Hanzo tucks his head underneath Jesse’s chin, fingers tracing idle patterns against his shoulder and down his bicep, and within minutes, the sharpshooter’s breathing has slowed. Ten minutes had certainly been generous, indeed.

Hanzo smiles, though, letting his own eyes slide shut as he lets the easy rhythm of Jesse’s breathing lull him toward unconsciousness as well. He probably won’t stay the full fourteen hours, no, but after being apart so long, he can at least stay and get in a wink or two of his own.

**Author's Note:**

> Time difference between London and Gibraltar is only one hour so take THAT science my dumb shower fic still WORKS


End file.
